Course taken: Junior Year (2021-2022)
Reflection:
Math is not a subject I viewed as a “global subject” before I checked the course catalog and saw the little globe next to it. Personally, I had always viewed English and History as “the” global subjects as they are practically applied every day in policy and global events. However, now I realize why math and its often counterpart, science are possibly equally as global as English and History, if not more. It is because of the last century where the industrial revolution kicked off and then evolved into the race of technological development including a key event, the space race. It is because of the interconnectedness of countries around the world that we live the way we do today. Because of human competitiveness, sharing and pirating ideas, technology and therefore the math and science used to create it has been the most unifying factor that world history has ever seen.
In this honors precalculus class, we rarely discussed the way in which math was a global subject other than to snark about the way in which Americans are inferior to many other countries in that specific subject. What I realize now is that math can be so unifying because it is a universal language that everyone can understand. Across the globe, people communicate in hundreds of languages with different alphabets and slang. Math, however, is always constant (haha math pun). In my class of about 10 students, we had three international students; each from Russia, China and Japan. It was easy to work together because we all understood math more than we may ever understand each other's language or culture. So, now that I understand that math is the best way to relate globally, I can understand why the science and math fields may have better communication than diplomats with backgrounds in language, history and politics.